Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

She had a bit of intellectual credibility and honesty, which the current shadow minister lacks. She said:

... are combined with existing State and Territory health monies ... and the combined pool of money is then applied to the population’s health needs.

Let us be quite clear. As far as the Deputy Leader of the Opposition is concerned, this is the death of Medicare and its replacement by something resembling the UK National Health Service. But she did not leave that back in 2004. As recently as her Earl Page lecture last year, she said:

A Labor government would be prepared to examine the need for big changes. That includes a single funder for health care.

She even managed to con her then leader, the member for Brand, who said in his address to the Economic and Social Outlook Conference in Melbourne last November:

But shifting to a single public funder for health care is on my reform agenda.

So she supports it and the former leader supports it. But wait. Recently the Age reported the shadow minister for federal-state relations, the member for Fraser, as saying:

Mr McMullen said the single funding model, where the Commonwealth and states would contribute to a common pool of money, had substantial problems.

Well, good on the shadow minister for federal-state relations. ‘That would be a bad idea,’ he said. Who is right? Is it the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, who supports a single funder, or the shadow minister for federal-state relations, who opposes it? I say to the Leader of the Opposition: you cannot wimp out of taking sides on this one; you have got to take sides on this one. You cannot be all things to everyone on this one. But he is a strange piece of work, this bloke. He supports the US alliance but he does not support helping America in Iraq. He says he is against greenhouse gas emissions but he will not support nuclear—

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